With all the attention on Asteroid 2005 YU55, I wanted to talk more about the likelihood of an impact event taking out human beings and other forms of life on Planet Earth. The last asteroid to hit Earth was the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 60 million years ago called the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. This is pretty bad news because it means that another asteroid is due soon. What needs to be pointed about Asteroid 2005 YU55 is that it travels on an elliptical path and regularly passes the terrestrial planets. This is concerning because we have just started identifying it and it could be getting closer and closer to the Earth every time it travels on its orbit. But astronomers say that it is not a collision threat for the next 100 years even though they have placed it on the potentially hazardous list.
The Comet Shoemaker Levy-9 splitting and colliding with Jupiter in the summer of 1994 has made people realize that defense against asteroids is important. Asteroid mitigation strategies have improved considerably. Nuclear weapons are one of the best strategies to utilize in avoiding a collision. Something that I find fascinating is the use of focused solar energy. This would need a space station to be constructed next to the Earth which has a system of gigantic lens and magnifying glasses. This station would then be moved in the direction of the Sun.
Still, there are several issues with these avoidance strategies right now. There are numerous problems with asteroid capture as we do not have enough information on our solar system’s orbital features. Even the smallest disparities in approximations for planetary velocity and mass can be the reason for a manifold of amendments in the asteroid deflection process.
It is also interesting to note what people in the United States thought was the chances of asteroids hitting this planet. 31 percent of Americans thought that an asteroid will collide with Earth by the year 2050, but 61 percent disagreed according to both the Pew Research Center and the Smithsonian survey in the spring of 2010.[1]
Speaking of asteroids, they do not always have to be considered a bad thing. Asteroid mining is a popular method to solve the problems that we have on Earth. It has been speculated that asteroids have trillions of dollars’ worth of minerals and metals buried in them.